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Olivia Chow might have already lost the 2014 Toronto mayoral election

MP Olivia Chow, widow of late New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton, speaks during a tribute to her husband at the 2012 NDP Leadership convention at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) in Toronto, Ont., Friday, March 23, 2012.Photo: Darren Calabrese/National Post

Remember at the beginning of the 2012 U.S. presidential race when the Republican party had a different nominee in the lead every other week? The likes of Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain never did pose any real threat to Barack Obama.

A comparable wheel of frontrunners could be starting to spin in Toronto, where the next municipal election is nearly two years away, yet is already being viewed as a referendum on the performance of incumbent Rob Ford.

Olivia Chow has now been established as the ideal challenger, given how she spent over 14 years on city council — many of them alongside her late husband Jack Layton before he took the helm of the federal NDP — and would be able to apply her subsequent experience as MP for Trinity-Spadina since 2006.

Coverage of her hypothetical run has continued to ramp up: Tim Harper of the Toronto Star, Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun and Marcus Gee of The Globe and Mail dedicated recent columns to this supposed inevitability — a position countered by Chris Selley of the National Post — while a survey from Forum Research concluded that 40% of the city would vote for Chow as mayor compared to 35% for Ford and 13% for Councillor Adam Vaughan.

Yet when Chow’s former executive assistant Helen Kennedy was hand picked to replace her on city council in 2006, she was beatten by longtime TV reporter Vaughan, who campaigned against the NDP machinery that assumed it had a lock on downtown Toronto.

Of course, Rob Ford has never hesitated to align himself with the Conservatives — even if there was an effort to suppress a video of Stephen Harper calling for a right-wing government “hat-trick” at the mayor’s backyard BBQ last year — and brother Doug Ford has all but promised to vacate his current job as city councillor to run provincially next spring.

For now, Doug has reaffirmed his commitment to Rob’s re-election by deigning to respond to a question about the non-challenger: “Olivia Chow is no Jack Layton,” he said on Wednesday, “and if they (voters) want tax-and-spend government, they’re going to elect Olivia Chow; it’s very simple.”

A bit more complicated is whether Chow can win over voters outside of the downtown core she has represented for a couple of decades. Ford’s appeal in all other corners of the city was given credit for his victory — and the sustained support despite all the drama that swirls around him.

So, if Chow is genuinely mulling a mayoral run, it could be helpful to line up a few decoy candidates to distract the media for the time being.